2018 Board elections update

There will be elections for the UKBGF Board 2019-2020 coming up soon, and this year’s elections will differ from past ones…

There has been concern expressed that past and present Boards have been London-centric. Certainly the membership as a whole is not spread around the country evenly, but has a number of large clusters – London the most obvious and the largest one but others in Bristol, Worcester, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle, for example. In order to try to ensure more even representation, the Board have decided to revise the format of the elections. The country will be divided into three separate areas as shown on the map above. These were based on trying to define areas with balanced numbers of members, without resorting to really contrived boundaries. Using the January membership list, these broke down as:

“London”: 122 members

“North”: 89 members

“Midlands, South and West” 149 members

The voting will happen as in past years, with everyone able to vote for any candidates for the Board, but the results will work as follows: the seven people elected will be

the highest ranking individual from each area, and

the four next highest ranking individuals

We hope this will encourage more people from outside London to put their names forward, with no risk of “splitting the vote”. A wider geographic spread of Board members will also mean that more places have a “local” member who can keep in touch with players and clubs in their part of the world. The Board will still have the ability to co-opt additional members if it appears helpful to do so. I’d also like to emphasise that you don’t need to be an expert player to be a good Board member – in fact more representation across the spectrum of playing ability is also highly desirable.

The next Board will review how these elections go and learn any lessons that come out, including whether the spread of candidates is broadened, and in case any seats are taken “by default” (which is clearly undesirable). Nominations for this year’s elections will open immediately after the UK Open, and if you’d like to know more about what it’s like to be on the Board please contact any of us.

About Julia Hayward

Comments

I’m pleased to see an issue recognised and some change proposed. However, I feel the suggested change does not do enough to address the main issues cited of
A) London centric
B) connecting with the membership.

Given historical precedent with 1 London board member already elected I think it likely, that at least 3 of the 4 most popular will be from the London area- thus providing majority. Secondly, let’s say we end up with just one Northern member- he or she has 3 countries to cover!
My proposal would be to increase the Board membership to 8 ( it helps with the workload if nothing else). Then have the 2 highest from each region and the remaining 2 would go to highest vote. No one region would have a majority and for a split vote the chair should have casting vote.
Having at least 2 reps per region held better connectivity with membership and mitigates to some extent the risk of one rep’s circumstances changing and leaving them with less available time.
Finally, I would empower the regional reps to have a support team of 2 people to help the manage the workload. Hopefully, this way the UKBGF will be better able to deliver in what is a good intention

i am afraid it s not the ideal.obviously,only the percentage should matter.there are 360 members on 11 places,midlands,south and west should have 5 members,london 3 and north 3.

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